As the sun sets around 5pm, Venus blazes in the south-southwest. Our sister planet is at its farthest point east of the sun. But the geometry between Venus, the sun and earth doesn’t add up to a better view, as the evening star climbs only a dozen degrees above the horizon and sets within 90 minutes of the sun. Still, Venus is near impossible to miss, and Thursday evening it is joined by the waxing crescent moon a little higher in the sky.
As Venus sets in the...

Mike Pantelides — whose campaign slogan is Sweep Annapolis Clean — is sweeping Josh Cohen out of office, according to early election returns. With all but absentee ballots and one precinct counted in the Annapolis mayoral race, challenger Pantelides leads incumbent Cohen by 84 votes, 3,728 to 3,644.
At one point in counting, Pantelides’ lead was only 20 votes.
“It’s another manifestation of the anti-incumbent sentiment voters...

Some people dream of setting out on their own to sail the vast oceans of our world. It seems like a grand adventure, until something goes wrong and you find yourself slowly taking on water hundreds of miles from help. What to do when your grand adventure turns into a disaster?
Our Man (Robert Redford: The Company You Keep), the unnamed protagonist, wakes on his yacht to gentle waves splashing at his face. Wading through the cabin, he finds a hole poked into the side of his...

How are you managing this last week before Election Day November 5?
Josh Cohen A campaign is kind of like a pregnancy. You forget how difficult it is, so you do it again. We’ve been through this several times, and we’ll get through this one. But — and I just had this conversation with my wife — I’ll be a little more stressed than usual this week.
Mike Pantelides About two weeks ago, I took a leave of absence from my job to...

Six-year-old Katie Asher is just beginning to understand the meaning of caring and giving. Every morning she drops a can of food into the collection boxes at Davidsonville Elementary, where she is a first-grader.
“We’re giving food to the poor people,” she says.
Fifth graders like 10-year-old schoolmate Julia Cobb are understanding that not everyone has as much as they do, so they should share with people who have less.
...

I’m under attack. Everywhere I look, squirrels are scampering up trees, toting nuts in their mouths, scurrying across my yard and darting in front of my car.
The word squirrel was borrowed by the Romans from the Greek word skiouros, which means shadow-tailed. Ancient Greek naturalists found their bushy tails remarkable.
I find the bushy-tailed scamps a daily nuisance. I’m dodging them like the flippers in a vintage pinball arcade game, the...

Despite excellent conditions, the Young of Year Survey is disappointing

Despite excellent conditions this past spring with plenty of rain and cool temperatures, the Young of Year Survey of rockfish reproduction success for 2013 is a very disappointing 5.6, well below the 60-year average of 11.7.
Over the past seven or eight years, Young of Year spawning numbers have come to look more and more like the profiles that precipitated the rockfish moratorium of the 1980s. The only recent high count came in 2011, when our spring weather was so violent...

Fans of award-winning author Lisa Scottoline have a treat this week. She’s coming to Annapolis for a reading and signing of her latest book, Accused.
Accused is another installment in the series of legal thrillers featuring Mary DiNunzio, an attorney at the all-women Rosato & Associates in Philadelphia. Followers of the series expect Mary to be drawn into situations that put her in danger. Smart and impetuous, she’s likely to act without considering the...

Reading Learning to Care and Give, Bob Melamud’s story for this week’s paper, kindles a spark of envy in me.
Six-year-old Katie Asher is just beginning to understand the meaning of caring and giving, Melamud writes. Every morning she drops a can of food into the collection boxes at Davidsonville Elementary, where she is a first-grader.
By high school, he continues, students like Tina Depietro, who built a food-can sculpture for South River...

The last day of October marks the mid-point between autumnal equinox and winter solstice, one of four cross-quarter days in the passage of the earth around the sun. The day has been recognized for millennia, celebrated as Samhein, The Day of the Dead and All Hallow’s Eve, or Halloween.
It will be a near-moonless Halloween this year, with the last vestiges of the waning crescent rising in the wee hours before dawn. If you’re out walking with your trick-or-treaters...